Moments were all it had taken to change his existence, his perception and that of all to whom he was connected: his family, his challenger and his community.
“These are serious charges, son. There’s no other way to say it.” The police officer sat back in his chair, uttered a deep sigh and fell silent.
His humming anger still rang in his ears. Racing images filled his mind and in them he escaped the small room.
His challenger had come on him from behind after practise had finished as he and his buddies walked home. The unseen tackle planted his face in the dirt.
“Get up, Tommy, so I can take you down again.”
As he lifted himself to stand, a paralysing spike of pain shot through his coccyx as he was kicked down again. His buddies engaged to defend their honour. Before he could roll over, weight pinned him down, quickly followed by a slam to the side of his face then another. Ringing pain in his skull left him dazed. The weight lifted then more pain slammed into his side. Curling up, there was another slam that broke through his forearms into his nose.
“You’re not number one any more, Tommy. Forget that and you and your little pussy pals will get another lesson.” Miles towered over him for a second then was blocked by the blackness of a stamping boot to his head. Jeers and cruel laughter were the final blow. Although it was shared pain that bonded him to his two friends, it was only his rage that drove them apart. He made straight for his parent’s bedroom and grabbed his father’s pistol from the shoebox at the back of the wardrobe.
His youth, blind anger and ego overrode the throbbing physical pain. He intercepted Miles near the diner, stalking him from behind and across the street. He saw his chance for surprise and charged as Miles’ gang were passing the alley beside the diner. His speeding shoulder barge sent Miles into the mouth of the alley, headlong against the wall. Before Miles’ friends could react, the pistol was out and they were halted by fear and confused panic.
Miles’s face became a picture of childish terror that robbed him of words. Revenge began with a sense of satisfaction.
He squeezed the trigger but there was no movement, no change. Revenge faltered in sync with their changing expressions. A stuttering second and third try was all he was afforded before the gang split with shouts for help. Rage ended with a sense of anxious regret.
“Son, look at me.” The officer was a rock between him and the door that he could neither move, run from nor climb over. “This is serious, Tommy. You’re in deep trouble. Staying quiet won’t help in the long run. Are you gonna talk to me or not?” His parents were on the way and he would rather face their wrath first. “Suit yourself. I’ve been doin’ this long enough to know I’m right.”
Voices outside the now empty room carried the promise of troubled salvation. The door was opened by the black-clad figure of Father Michael.
“Your family is outside and they have asked me to speak to you, Thomas. This is off-the-record, just you and me. I’m here to try and help you to sort all of this out before it goes too far. If you trust me, tell me what happened. No one else can hear us.”
Overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness, he began to sob. The Father’s comfort subdued him enough to recount the story.
“You were in pain, Thomas. Pain and fear can drive us all to regret. It drove you to revenge, which is the first step. The police told us that there were no bullets in the gun, and the safety catch was still on. Did you even know how to use it?” He shook his head. A rueful smile broke out on the Father’s face.
“You chose to exact your revenge through pain and even worse. The results of that are bad. Did you stop to consider another way?” Another shake of the head. “Revenge is not one thing. It is not one shape. It can be made into other things. What if you had taken the beating, accepted that you had been bettered and then moved forwards? What if you had disarmed Miles by forgiving him?”
“He beat me because he’s jealous. He wanted my place. If I didn’t face him down, I’d be humiliated. Why should I forgive him?”
“Maybe so. But have you ever fought with your brother?”
He nodded.
“And you are still brothers. Through forgiveness can come other things. Perhaps you could have become friends, and through friendship you could have made revenge into something else?”
“Like what, Father?”
“Just enough love to keep peace, and maybe control. If you had led Miles like that, you would have beaten him in the end. Instead, because of rage, you made revenge into the sudden pain you felt. In doing that, you made an irreversible choice that you regret. You didn’t know how to use the gun and if you did, this would be ten times worse. Now, you are humiliated again, this time by your own hand. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies, before we make enemies of our brothers.”
“He’s not my brother!”
“We are all brothers, Thomas.”
MK ULTRA
Joint Services Overview
14 June 1966
Practise Development
Commercial partners
Application Development
Kubark revisions
Discovery Update
Trust was an extremely powerful cover, in the right context. Sal flicked through the dossier as usual.
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PAGE 2
Practise Development
Supply chains for synthesis of LSD, barbiturates and amphetamines are planned to be fully established with commercial partners under SECRETNOFORN clearance…
Application Development
Established applications in all military branches provide steady, fruitful feedback. Likewise foreign and domestic security applications…
…KUBARK techniques benefit from overhaul, incorporating MK ULTRA applications developed since last updated (April 1964 - September 1964), for use in the field. Agents or authorised delegates granted IC3 or greater clearance are unrestricted in application choice. Attorney General authorisation is inherent with IC3 clearance…
It was the last page that was of greatest import.
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PAGE 17
In his office, he typed out an exact copy of the dossier’s last page and switched his new version for the one that James had delivered to him. The egregiousness of their information sharing technique was the lowest risk and least complicated way they had found. It was one step removed from hiding in plain sight.
He took the half-used packet of Alka Seltzer powders from his case and sprinkled half of it into his glass of water, which he stirred with his three fingers. He began to quickly smear the sodium bicarbonate solution across the page to reveal James’ handwritten, double encrypted message. Meeting face-to-face was the highest risk and workload task any of them could perform. They had quickly decided to exploit the trust placed in them and the legitimate contact points they had to use this basic, direct and reliably secure method of communication. James himself authored and delivered the Ultra dossiers directly to the meeting attendees. Sal would decrypt and memorise the message then destroy it there in his lunch hour. This was orders of magnitude less risky and more efficient than arranging to meet.
BLUEBOOK & MKU to be reconnected.
Network expansion: senate assets JUMPER, BANGOUT & FISHER; MOONFACE to seed.
Dependency: DEPARTURE
This would make life easier and increase their capability. While Project Bluebook was the father of MK Ultra, it was heavily compartmentalised and rarely fed directly into what Ultra had grown into, meaning that communication with Thomas was slow and still high risk. There was so much self-sustaining work in Ultra itself that it didn’t need further seeding from Bluebook to keep everyone busy spending the Ultra budget and asking for more and more money. Now, there was a way to reconnect the two, although the message did not reveal how. Likely a discovery in Bluebook was the justification. Once that connection was re-established, it would be easier to send and receive information to Thomas and between all three of them.
They were to commence external approaches to the three senators that they had carefully identified as potential allies, all of whom had their own codenames. They were not looking for people who would politically exploit a situation or knowledge. They were looking for long term partners who could hold public office for as long as they each could hold a desk in the Agency. The approaches would commence one at a time, starting with JUMPER.
Cranforth, codenamed MOONFACE, was moving on. That was an opportunity for them to connect to another section or project. Cranforth’s loyalty and disposition had been fully verified by Thomas over the years they’d been together. If Thomas had done the best he could, Cranforth would be getting promoted rather than transferred.
If all the above worked, the next, dependent actions of establishing an external footprint would commence. This project was codenamed DEPARTURE.
They were losing the war for the information advantage, but this was exactly as they had envisioned it. They were already on the back foot the moment JFK had been killed. It would take years and years of careful, focused effort before they were in a position of pseudo equivalence and exactly what that looked like, none of them knew. Their achievements to this point were ground-breaking. Between the three of them, they had secretly removed internal CIA and Joint Services compartmentalisation between the most secret project in the USA and a child project of massive importance and capability, in order to be able to monitor and protect both from the rising power. They couldn’t stop its tide yet, but they had to try and slow it.
A little over a year had passed since the assassination of Malcolm X, signalling the continued takeover of their country.